Ennui Eyes

258.

That's how many blog posts I've pushed out since I got serious on this platform at the end of August 2005.

The sound the Most Prolific Blogger award makes is "whoosh-thik", as it clips me on the shoulder and soars past towards others worthier on my google reader.

Genesis

It was our Honours year. 2004.

Razina (now a perspicacious Fourth-Estater with the Financial Mail) and I (Jane-of-all-trades who does a bit of wordswork) skipped out of our Journalism Theory class, our heads full of Anton Harber-isms and this Blogging thing. 

Off to the post-grad computer labs to get in on the action and become the cyber-bastions of Truth, the wwwatchdogs of the State, the free voices giving voice to the voiceless, wadda wadda, all that stuff you write for the entrance applications.

The first blog I ever really got into was written by Reza in Canada. "Musing Over The Ontological Status of a Boiled Egg". With a title like that, sure, it's gonna grab me by my metaphorical cajones. It's defunct now, but you can still go through his archives. Brilliant stuff.

While setting up my blogger account, I stared at the hulking grey servers making fresh pasta of the data cables, and I thought, "Hmm...you know what, that looks a lot like electric spaghetti..."

I'm now a blogger!! k3wl!!

My first few posts were hardly the stuff of killer citizen journalism we were creaming ourselves over in class. A kitschy poem that rhymed (yeah, I used to do those) and a list of words I found interesting (I recall flocculent, being one of them). You could tell I was farting fairy dust at the time.

And blogging bored me. Mostly because no one read me (what did I know of link-baiting and comment-whoring then. I thought that if I built it, Google would make them come). So I left it to die a slow, stinky death.

The becoming.

Then this guy decided to turn his weekly Randeree-roundup email into a series of  blogposts. Suddenly, my blog was up on his link list, it was being read. I should've been elated right? Instead, I was horrified that friends and strangers would be reading the twaddle. I deleted everything, and put up a little spring-clean notice. It was time to decide what the blog should become. 

A space for me to write to keep the rust away.

And you know the rest

Personal observations. Me, without too much me. Rare bits of social commentary. Travel stories. Ad-jamming. Obscurities. Little things I do in Photoshop and InDesign. Fun with 419-ers. Monologues. Trying to be a bit clever and fancy with the words. Amusements. A real salmagundi, the phenotype of what it's like in my head sometimes.

Ennui eyes?

It could be due to my current frustrations career-wise, that I find this blogging thing iffy and blehsome of late. I'm easily annoyed at people who poo-poo ponitificate all over the place (and I've used that term in conversation with at least two friends so far). I'm irritated by the judgements I see cast, the idiocy that gets the approved sticker from quality control and an undiscerning audience. I can't stand the sheer amount of inane convoluted verbiage (and I use that word ironically) that's out there. 

I don't want to feed into this.

I wasn't always like this. This critical, this angsty.

So I guess, I'm saying I'm just tired and a little jaded.

And maybe I need to eat more soya beans.

"Be water, my friend" and current addictions

Ramadaan and fasting has me as placid and calm as an undisturbed forest pool,  and I am more inclined to do what is asked of me. 

Like Bruce Lee, my way is of water.

So while I don't usually respond to tags as a full blog post, I will do this for Fatima because not only am I roza-compliant, but she is almost-family and gave me a really awesome serving bowl as a wedding present.

My five current addictions are as follows:

1. Fennel. The seeds, the sprigs, ground up or whole. I will add it to any dish I can get away with.
   
2. Google reader. How could I have not latched on to this sooner!? Shame on me.
   
3. Twitter. I'm following some of South Africa's brightest people and some brilliant buitelanders.
   
4. Woolworths Taste Magazine
   
5. Making coffee popsicles. See here for directions. Add a bit of elachi (cardamom) for that lekker extra.
   

--note-- Killa's gone and tagged me as well. Even though I didn't get a discount on the jellies I bought from their shop, he's family too (the tentacles of the charo-connections* extend into the blogosphere)

I will not tag anyone specifically. If you care to play along, leave your list in the comments section.

*aka "haga kareh" in the guji vernac, "my granny's your grandpa's cousin", "my aunty's married to your brother-in-law's sister" and on and on until you discover you've gone and married someone whose forebearers worked in the same village rice keti as your great-great-grand-dada's.

Light this candle

A nine-year old girl was killed after a hit-and-run incident on Jan Smuts Avenue in Johannesburg this morning.
The child, on her way to school, was waiting for a taxi when the accident occurred.
The only passenger in the minibus said she felt the taxi hit something just before the driver stopped. "He demanded I leave the taxi right then and gave me my R7.50 back. I didn't understand what was happening. It was only when I got off the taxi and he reversed and then drove off, that I saw," she said.
The passenger could not recall the license plate number of the taxi. The driver remains unidentified.
--

That's what the news story would read like, perhaps including other details like the eye-witnesses who were on the street at the time and the name of the passenger if she did not want to remain anonymous. There would even be a quote from the victims distraught father, her schoolteacher, the police, an outraged city official even. Her school would've been identified by the embroidery on her uniform. Her name would be on the schoolbooks in her bag.

I don't know if anyone has written the story about what happened to that nine-year-old schoolgirl this morning. My colleague was the passenger in the taxi. That's how I know.

And this is all I know.
And now you know.
Please remember her and her family in your prayers.

--update (April 25)-- The story was covered by The Times

On our way home

We are
creased commuters, squashed between mama and the silent man with the itch in his side. After-robot! Now we can nurse life back into a tingly leg.

We are
drivers with our windows open and the radio up, we'll chance metal against our temples because the air con's broke and it's a long wait at a dead robot at 5.30pm on a weekday.

We are
the man selling sunglasses at the corner. And the one selling mangoes. And the one selling clothes hangers. And the one selling a massive neon bouncing ball.

We are
the lady selling chances to numb your guilt.

We are
the one giving her money, thinking her child seems too old to be carried. "Look, his legs dangle past her knee," we mutter while fishing in the ashtray for the car-guard's change.

We are
taxi drivers, battered emperors of the tacky tarmac. Don't be so insolent as to believe you have any right of way over us.

We are
12 year olds at the roadside, wielding spark plugs for just one shot for glass to rain. Just one chance. One cellphone. This is the difference between today and tomorrow for me.

We are
the people who shoot them. Thieving bastards deserve it. Damn, he looked older when he smashed my windscreen.

----

You may have heard/read this in the news. Crime has made something ugly of us all, the victims and the perpetrators. See how the lines are blurring.

Do those who are that shade of moral-grey, also scare you more than barefaced thieves and murderers?

Jane and the magic kiddie-stop beans.

"There are indications from clinical studies that the mild antimineralocorticoid properties of the Magic Kiddie-Stop Beans result in a mild antimineralocorticoid effect," Jane carefully read aloud from the tome.
"Anti-mineral-o-corti-coid," she mouthed with all the slow-nooooo effect of a Zee TV daytime soapie rani lunging at her son who was about to drink the poisoned lassi meant for her mother-in-law.
Were they saying the properties of a substance that suppressed the secretion or opposed the action of mineralocoritcoids, would result in the suppression of the secretion or the opposition of the action of the mineralocorticoids?
Jane's left eyeball was suddenly spiked by a spear of blinding pain.
All she wanted to know was if the little beans would make her bloated, grumpy or suicidal.
Reading the little booklet that was packaged with the magic kiddie-stop beans made her feel bloated, grumpy and suicidal.
Dros Pirenone and Ethin Ylestradiol sounded like her eastern-european neighbours who led an alternative lifestyle and had just adopted a two-year old nepalese child.
Too many syllables. Too many acutes. Too many thromboembolic disorders. Too many scary sounding things she didn't understand that related to parts of her body that sounded rather important to have without the complications of itis, emia, oma, opia or esis.
Jane reached that point of confusion where the only thing that made pure and perfect sense was to go shopping for a new pair of shoes and a breastpump.

Move over Simon & Garfunkel...

Make your own old-skool tape here.
Non-SoufEfrikans click here and here for context.

The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of ...

"Click the pic," said the Shotgun to the Head.

Tell me God doesn't have a sense of humour...

... and I'll direct you to the front pages of South Africa's major national newspapers to disprove you.

- A warrant for arrest issued for our National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi by National Director of the National Prosecuting Authority Adv Vusi Pikoli (who's been suspended incidentally). Selebi is the Head of Interpol. Cue canned laughter.

- Our sick Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang is reported to have 'seen the light' in this morning's edition of The Star. Hundreds of clueless homeless people were bussed off to Pretoria yesterday to participate in a mass prayer session for the newly-livered troubled soul. One of the indigent participants said he did not know who or what he was praying for, and only went because he was told he would get food there. I suppose the homeless are generally safe around kleptomaniacs. After Tshabalala-Msimang took communion, and imbibed the spirit (something which she is obviously not unaccustomed to) The Star reported her saying, "I am feeling completely revived and energised... I am not going to let up in continuing to discharge my duties to help improve the quality of life of all South Africans."
God save us. It's not funny anymore.

testosterone soap opera

It was that of every great narrative, there-in the dichotomies of human experience; good and evil, light and dark, adversity and triumph.


Stories where they threaded; protagonists on the precipice, the victorious who rise from the ashes of their seeming defeat, the underdog, the powerful and arrogant, brothers in arms.
All of whom were smacked by those moments of utter futility, where even the brief marriage of hand on hand could mean the difference between pride and its death, where to grasp the tensile rope for support is to turn the battle on its flank.

This is where gods are made and leveled.


There was the bitterness of being close enough to take Victory by her shoulder, only to have no witness of referee to your triumph. But as it is in the Great Plot that guides this through, Good will always prevail.
It is with every tale that there are those who are loved beyond fallibility and those who incite the fevered choirs of "You Suck! You Suck!" when they dare to displace heroes.
And as it is with all the stories of our times, there will always be the ebullient adulation of one or a mass who will erupt in the greatness of the moment when the right man holds up the leather and gold, for all to witness, "I am a champion!"

Even blogwhores...

... need some R&R for a little R&D.

Best wishes till endish-July,
and remember

16.06.1976

For Unknown 16/06/76

a frozen face
on a white wall.

open mouth
rigid arms

your eyes
are the eyes of your comrades

children
with weighted shoulders

and loud voices
muted by the captured moment.

but I hear it.
decibels of scaled anger
your suffering erupt,

holding out its arms to me.

am I worthy of embrace?

1976- not even a seeded thought
in the mind of a girl I call mother.

you are background
context to your time
framing the "struggle"
painting it with your essence
as bullets tattoo your fate.

A bricked acknowledgement
that you were felled on that day
now bedded on gravel
bordered by the crunching tourist tiptoes
echoing now-impotent jackboots

the granite speaks

of more bodies,
not nobodies
but somebodies
with names
and for others without

there is a brick
in a yard
on the gravel.


(conceptualised after a visit to the Hector Pieterson Memorial in Soweto, June 16, 2005)

Of shivering loins and heaving dirtypillows...

S: how do u write sex though? dont want it to be all smarmy
S2: true
you dont want it porno
nor do you want it mush
or a weird combination i call "morno"
S: yeh...i hav no clue...all this writing...im outa my league
S2: which is kinda like mills and boons
S2: a mix of mush and porno, but where you're saying "more? noooooooooooo"

Just for tricks

A little game to play on those days when your triplo espresso isn't quite cutting it and other homo-sapiens suddenly look like they'd make a good first course (with lemon-pepper marinade and an accompaniment of fava beans).

When asked - "That's so unusual. What does your name mean?" - respond with random combinations of subject, verb, object. Your statements do not need to follow through logically. In fact, logic is besides the point.

In practice:
you - "Oh my name? Well, in [insert vernacular here] it means..."

possible responses -

"She who walks with the ducks"
"She who farts in the dark"
"She who is praised by the monkey-people"
"She who flies with the ants"
"She who is revered by those who revere the ones who are revered."
"She who is what she is when she's not something else"
"She who will hail the Annanuki" [queen_Lestat edit - annUnAki]

etc.

happy day.

The blog of Small Things

*Been stewing for a while. and no, I'm not about to go buy a Kenny G music-to-slit-your-wrists-by Special Holiday edition. This is pure self-indulgence. Insert disclaimer of choice here.*

“Welcome to the pity party. So pleased you could join us. We have trays of masochism and punch so good you’ll cry. Should you be so inclined, a selection of razors and blades are laid out on a table near the DJ box, individually wrapped for your protection. Please enjoy yourselves, but not too much. Hope you have a wretched evening.”

I left the park last weekend. Packed the accumulation of a year into stackable cardboard boxes and took the highway to the East Rand, where I will now spend most of my weekends.

*mandatory benoni girl joke*

Q. What do you call a Benoni girl in a white tracksuit

A. The bride

Moving’s never easy. When you’re strapped for space, you suddenly realize just how much of all that you value is clutter. Books get heavier, cds stack up awkwardly, jackets bulk up, hard-drives hulk like museum dinosaurs.

One of those weekends too, where tragedy laid a pall over my family when my uncle and aunt met with an accident on their way to Port Shepstone. My aunt lost the baby she’d been carrying for the last 7 months. Both her and my uncle had to have one of their hands amputated. I’ve never been good with grief. Losing the people you care about around you makes you no expert. I never know what to say, except when I think of my own bereavement and all I can say is, “`it’s hard, and you will feel self-pity. You will bargain with your God, and you will be angry. That is what it was like for me until the resolve to accept sets in. You’ll become too tired to be angry. Its time to resign yourself, because ‘Why’ sometimes remains one of those questions to which the answers will not leave you satisfied.” I stopped asking ‘Why’ a long time ago.

--

I feel like-

I’m being strained through a colander.

Like I’m being forced to spread and separate, until I’m only reconstituted Saaleha.

With Work, with Home, with Study and Family issues, I’m being stretched.

I’m walking around; static mess, this field of scratchy unintelligible sound drowning out my clarity, slaving me to disorganization, inefficiency, procrastination.

My eyeballs are lubricated with seeded strawberry juice, the insides of my eyelids lined with a fine grade of sandpaper.

It doesn’t help that I haven’t been to gym in two/three months. The monthly bank debit glares at me disapprovingly, judging me, poking breadsticks at the extra-Saal.

I also had a pimple on my chin, so large it deserved a christening and its own facebook profile.

I was heavy inside. The kind of heavy that has you choked up. The kind of heavy that makes you a gut bag of lachrymal fluid filled up till the skin stretches and shimmies. One muscle twitch and you’re bleeding salt all over yourself.

And I sat there looking at my phone, scrolling through my phonebook and not knowing who to call.

So many friends. So many big-hearted, kind, beautiful people. So many I love, so many I would die for. Why, when I fill up with heavy, am I so uncomfortable and reluctant to ask them for their ears?

And when I do choose to share, I’m left feeling like someone sneaked up behind me and pulled down my pants.

--

ok. all done now.

Beeg deranged smile. :)

on if we could see what we carry

In a world of manifest metaphor, we carry our baggage by our sides and on our backs. Into suitcases, hold-alls, carry-ons and duffel bags, we cramp and stuff once significant others, bruises taken as children, rejections suffered at the hands of those more than us, dreams we were slow to claim and the crumbs of daily inadequacies that flake off to line the inseams.

We struggle with our mis-matched luggage; backs stooped, gaits shuffled; into cars, onto busses, taxis, shifting for space around our legs in coffee-shops, cinemas, cubicles at work, restrooms and parks.

Some people’s baggage precede them - taking up too much of your elbow room while others clutch them tightly to their chests, afraid the bones will fall out. We all move around each other in concerted rhythm; this sluggish dance of dragging trunks and lockers, weighted down by chunks of heart, reams of unwritten words; hard-drives of emails we never pushed the button on and what-ifs that clutter in-between.

We see each other for the mules we are and search for some luggage carousel’s re-assuring loop to offload and walk away straight backed; leaving hang-ups and let-downs to circle unclaimed.

rush hour

the world comes together at twilight;
day seaming shut, sun bleeding into a pool at the edges, and the gentle assertiveness of the stars.
but the traffic makes us forget.
overcome by lightshows from the other amnesiacs, the mind spills over with the detritus of the day and the recurring comfort of Home.

Red robot, our evening star.
brake light, clutch, brake, stop, de-gear.

and for a moment, look out the window and the soul breathes.

and coughs.
your spirit-kin gripping dirty cardboard, calling out for God to bless you.
your wet-soap eyes slip through, you can't afford the awkward connection, and your pupils find a point just beyond the lazy bum who cracks your heart a little before you steel it once again.
and there, is the little girl.
with the whole wide world speeding around her, their minds spilling over with the detritus of the day and the recurring comfort of Home.
And she looks to the moon, her cardboard held high, a waving fan, brushing against the stars she is, jumping up, flapping wings, chasing at the fireflies above.
something almost pulls, come out and play.
almost.

Green robot.
clutch, accelerator.
Go.